In many respects, what Hack and Steinberg propose is more like San Francisco's Embarcadero, a palm-lined boulevard that follows the bay and connects the waterfront to the downtown. San Francisco's dig came about by chance, after a 1989 earthquake destroyed its freeway.
Although the idea of tearing apart part of I-95 was first floated almost a decade ago, the stars seem finally to be aligning. This summer, Philadelphia will select a firm to prepare a detailed master plan for the central Delaware. Some of the world's best-known planners are angling for the job.
Alan Greenberger, the city's planning director, said the winner would be expected to offer scenarios for dealing with I-95, especially the trench section. It would be the first serious analysis of the city's options since the interstate separated Center City from its waterfront in 1979.
"To tell you the truth, I don't think the consultant is going to come up with any new ideas. I-95 has been looked at so many times already," Greenberger acknowledged. "What we're hoping is that they'll be able to create a consensus for one approach."
Ironically, some of the strongest opposition to a Philly Dig comes from Rina Cutler. Now the city's deputy mayor for transportation, she was Boston's transportation director when the Big Dig began.
While Cutler concedes that the Big Dig "is an amazing engineering feat that will succeed in knitting the city back together," she argued that the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority is burdened with huge debt from its share of the project. "It can't afford to fix anything," she said.
As Philadelphia embarks on the master plan for its riverfront, the challenge will be to provide a hardheaded assessment of the costs and benefits:
Will getting rid of I-95 really yield the promised development?
What costs will the city and state have to bear if the federal government doesn't fund the reconstruction?
And can Columbus Boulevard really handle the extra traffic?
Barry Seymour, who heads the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, doesn't think so.
"Our take is that the volume is still significant going south. Delaware Avenue couldn't handle all the traffic," he said.
In Boston, the planning community is only just beginning to acknowledge that the Big Dig was worthwhile. October's ribbon-cutting for the greenway seemed as close as Boston had come to celebrating the end of the 22-year project.
Response to the park has been lukewarm. Its block-long segments often feel purposeless and empty - much like Independence Mall before its reconstruction. And the landscaping is decidedly second-rate.
Many Boston planners believe that the park hasn't caught on because it is too big and spread out. During the heated debates over the Big Dig construction, Massachusetts announced it would devote 75 percent of the land on top of the tunnel to open space. Today, many planners agree that Boston would have been better off with more buildings and less green space.
"The park totally lacks definition that you get from buildings," complained Thomas Piper, a professor of planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. More density is needed to close the gap between Boston's downtown and its newly accessible waterfront.
Officials at the turnpike authority suggest that the necessary density is just a real estate boom away.
"We need to be patient," said turnpike chief Jeffrey Mullen. "I think we're looking at some of the most valuable real estate in the commonwealth." The authority estimates that the Big Dig has created the potential for $7 billion in construction and 43,000 jobs.
The Big Dig was never just about development, though. Its original purpose was to reduce Boston's famously incapacitating gridlock. Mullen said the new, wider underground tunnel had cut commuting times by more than half.
It wasn't until later that planners began to understand that the Big Dig would also help reintegrate Boston's storied Italian North End into the downtown fabric, said Rick Dimino, a former Boston transportation commissioner who runs A Better City, a nonprofit agency.
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